Kenneth rubbed his wrists and grunted. “It’ll do for now.”
The woman steepled her hands in that particular manner of the Mer. “I am Queen Magaera, and my attention is yours. I regret if you have suffered any indignities, and will do all I can to remedy the matter to your satisfaction.”
Jake looked around their luxurious quarters. “I think we can forgive the misunderstanding.”
Kenneth ignored his partner, pointedly walking over to join Tessa. Surrounded by the queen’s guards, she stood stark and alone. He didn’t care if it earned him a prod. He wasn’t going to let Tessa stand alone like a leper.
Tessa gave him a weak smile. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”
Recognizing her need for comfort, Kenneth slipped his arms around her slender body. “It’s okay.” He kissed the top of her head. “We’ll figure this out.” It helped that he and Jake had been granted some recognition and status. If he could use it to help Tessa, he would.
She pressed against him, snuggling into his arms. “Hope so. I just want to go home.”
Kenneth tightened his hold on her. No matter what, he’d make sure they stayed together. “Why would you punish Tessa for something she didn’t do?” he asked, addressing the queen. “Shouldn’t she be hailed for opening the sea-gate and freeing her people?”
A small line formed between Queen Magaera’s brows. “Hailed?” She laughed. “What a ridiculous notion. When Nyala sealed the threshold, she handed the Mer a death sentence.”
Jake’s brows lifted in surprise. “I think you’d better let me do the talking here.” To Queen Magaera, he asked, “How did Nyala doom your world?”
Magaera curled her lips. “She cursed us with the sickening.”
Kenneth glanced at Tessa. “What’s the sickening?”
Tessa shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it doesn’t sound good.”
Jake clearly didn’t think so either. Face paling a little, he took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Explain the sickening.”
Magaera sighed as if impatient with the questioning. “To see is to know.”
Beckoning them to follow, she led the visitors to the wide stone balcony overlooking acres of lush, pristine, heavily forested land. The last of the day’s light glinted off the greenery. “How does it look?” she asked, lifting a hand to indicate the vast beauty of her kingdom.
Tessa frowned in confusion. “It’s beautiful, but I still don’t get any feeling from it.”
The queen glanced at her, disdain etched into her features. “Once, it was breathtaking. Now it is ruins.”
Tessa looked at her. So did everyone else.
“I see nothing out of place,” Kenneth remarked, taking a second long glance over the thick expanse of trees.
A hint of sadness replaced the anger in Queen Magaera’s face. “Most of it is an illusion.”
Kenneth didn’t understand. “I don’t get it.”
Magaera laid a cool hand on his arm. “What you see, human, is all facade. All you see now is energy particles strung together to create a more pleasing picture than reality.”
“Molecular energy,” Jake filled in. “She’s saying their world is strung together by an energy net.”
Magaera nodded. “At night the sky-crystals must rest to recharge themselves. As the darkness comes, the nets begin to unravel, revealing the true face of Ishaldi.” She pointed. “Behold, our degradation.”
Everyone looked again.
As though fire burned away the image of a magnificent painting, so did the fading rays bring a change to the landscape around the elaborate palace. It was like the hand of death reaching out, withering all that fell under its devastating touch.
Kenneth gasped. The land was sterile. Where life had once thrived, only stark remnants stood. The trees shrank back, leaves falling away, branches growing skeletal and thin. Other greenery was sparse, fighting to grow in the haggard conditions. What wildlife remained was in danger of extinction, as it had become constant prey for a desperate and starving human population.
The devastation stretched as far as the eye could see. The outlying lands offered no respite from the terrible drought gripping the land. An endless expanse of steppes stretched below a gathering of colossal mountains. Majestic in height and breadth, the limestone peaks ruled absolute over the wreckage of a dying world.
Kenneth swallowed tightly. It was eerie and unsettling to look at.
Jake stirred beside him. “My God. It’s almost dead.”
Tessa’s mouth dropped with shock. “This happened because the sea-gate was closed?”
Magaera nodded. “Although I was not yet born at the time, the scrolls kept by my grandmother, Queen Anthusa, confirm our world as prosperous in the beginning. Although Ishaldi had lost contact with the other side of the threshold, it was believed we had enough renewable resources to sustain ourselves indefinitely.”
“Sounds familiar,” Jake muttered.
“But resources had to be controlled. Because humans bred so much sooner in life than Mers, the first thing we had to do was contain their reckless breeding. We couldn’t let the population outgrow what we could reasonably support.”
Jake cocked a knowing brow. “So you began to cull them, choosing the superior and disregarding the inferior.”
Magaera nodded. “Yes, selective breeding. To keep Mer bloodlines strong, we wanted only the strongest. The rest became inferiors, of no real value except to work.”
“So you turned them into dray animals,” Tessa accused.
The queen narrowed her eyes. “Their breeding has to be controlled.”
“You still haven’t explained what the sickening is,” Kenneth broke in. He wasn’t quite ready to buy into all Magaera said. Though no psychic, he sensed that a current of deception ran under her cold calculation.
He had no real proof. Just a gut feeling.
Magaera fiddled with one of her elaborate crystal bracelets, twisting it around her slender wrist. “No one knows why it came,” she admitted after a moment’s silence. “It’s like a virus, a corrosive rot poisoning everything it touches. It spares nothing, not animal, insect, or plant. It has even begun to poison our water. With each passing day, more of our land grows uninhabitable. Even magic will not hold the disease at bay.”
Clearly horrified by the narrative, Tessa pressed a hand to her mouth. “By the goddess. How have you survived?”
“Through careful isolation, we have managed to preserve some of the needed species,” Magaera said. “But still our efforts mean little. We have only enough food to sustain the lessers, and that will not last. Given another century of such relentless onslaught, the remainder will surely perish, and then we Mer shall have nothing but ourselves and the stones that sustain us.”
“That’s why the Mer no longer eat,” Tessa informed them. “They’ve discovered their symbiotes can convert the energy they pull from crystals into a food source to sustain the physical.” She shook her head in amazement. “I’d never have imagined it was possible, though it makes sense.”
Queen Magaera smiled ironically. “Strangely, as our world dies around us the Mer found a way to triple the span of our lives. You may have noticed we have no lack of stones.”
Jake gave the queen a once-over. “How old are you anyway?”
Magaera paused in thought. “I have seen the worst of the sickening, watching my world shrivel up through seven hundred long years.”
Tessa couldn’t conceal her gasp of surprise. “I knew we could live a couple of hundred years, but I’ve never heard of Mers living that long.”
Queen Magaera gave the younger Mer a sardonic look. “It is an age you will never achieve, Tessa of the Tesch Dynasty. Come the morrow, you will pay for the crime of extinction Queen Nyala perpetrated against her people.”
Face going pale with shock, Tessa’s hands dropped, dangling uselessly at her sides. “I’d hoped you’d forgotten about that.”
“Not at all,” Queen Magaera said as the Mer guards moved in from all sides. “It was my intention the moment Doma Chiara informed me of your arrival. No one but a descendant of Nyala’s would have tried to return to Ishaldi.”
Kenneth stepped in front of Tessa, braving the points of at least a half dozen spears. He eyed the vicious Mers. Eyes glinting, they glared back. The looks on their faces hinted at their delight in carrying out their monarch’s orders.
“You’re not taking her anywhere.” What the hell could he possibly do? They were outnumbered and he didn’t have a single weapon at hand. Somehow he doubted the few karate moves he knew would handle the job. Chuck Norris, he wasn’t.
Queen Magaera flicked a careless hand. “Stand aside or both of you shall share her fate.”
Jake stepped up a little more reluctantly. “Now, hold on one minute,” he said, trying to ease the tension. “When we first arrived, Tessa was hailed as a goddess.”
Queen Magaera’s gaze held an edge of intent. “We are grateful for our freedom and the chance to begin restoring what we have lost. But even if the girl were not a Tesch, she would never be accepted anyway. Among the Mer she is an impure. Again, that makes her an outcast.” She flicked a careless hand. “By our law, she has no right to live.”
Tessa rolled her eyes. “My red hair and green eyes mark me as genetically inferior.”
Kenneth winced. It wasn’t the first time in history the pursuit of racial superiority had destroyed innocent lives. “You just granted us the status of ambassadors,” he said, trying to pull the proverbial rabbit out of a non-existent hat. “Surely you could extend the courtesy to Tessa, as well. She is the reason we are here.”
“As a Mer born and raised on the human side, technically she belongs to us,” Jake added.
Magaera’s eyes went as hard as stone. “Technically you are all alive because of my good graces,” she countered icily.
“And we do wish to stay on your good side, merciful queen,” Jake backpedaled, ever the expert ass kisser.
Kenneth gaped at the archaeologist. He should have figured when push came to shove, Jake would be the first to jump overboard to save his own worthless hide. The rat.
Magaera looked at them all, her expression grave. “As I said earlier, I require guidance as I plan the Mers’ return to the human world.”
Kenneth’s inner antennae went on high alert. There was no way in hell he’d help the Mer return to the human world.
Snapping his resolve into line, he cleared his throat. “I’m not helping you.”
The queen’s expression was utterly unconcerned. She didn’t look one bit impressed that he dared to speak up against her.
Magaera laughed. “You mistake your value in my eyes.” Her eyes flared, pale and almost colorless. “I require only one of you, and I have made my choice.” Her lips stretched into a mirthless smile. “Like the ill-bred Mer you unwisely defend, you are expendable.”
Just like that, the hammer delivering her judgment came down.
Hard.
Chapter 17
H
ands on her hips, Tessa surveyed the cell. As far as she could tell the walls surrounding them were fashioned from sheets of snowflake-colored obsidian. Though no more than a few inches thick, the smooth, shiny surface was impenetrable. And appeared to be absolutely unbreakable.
“There has to be a way out of this.”
“You tell me,” Kenneth said from behind her.
Tessa pivoted on her heel. Kenneth sat on the cold stone floor. Back against the wall, he sat with one leg bent at the knee, his arm casually propped on top. His hand dangled. The obsidian glowed faintly, just enough to provide a filtered, gloomy light.
“For a man that’s just been condemned to death, you’re taking things pretty calmly.”
He shrugged. “Not much I can do about it. We’ve been over every inch of this cell, and there isn’t a crack in the walls. And unless you can somehow conjure a sledgehammer, I doubt we’re going to be busting out of this place anytime soon.”
Tessa inwardly winced. He was absolutely right, damn it.
Walking over to the nearest wall, she pressed both her palms against the glassy surface. The stone was negatively charged, amplified until it had the strength of steel.
Shit. I can’t draw a charge off these
. It was like having a flashlight and a handful of dead batteries. Neither would do her any good.
She shook her head. Claustrophobia was beginning to set in. It was like being locked in a giant glass cube. “I doubt a sledgehammer would do the job. The stone’s been drained so no Mer can draw energy out.”
“I suppose after that go- round with the sea-gate you haven’t got any charge left to throw at it anyway.”
Tessa’s hands dropped. She’d almost burned herself down to a crisp trying to channel enough energy to open the sea-gate. Right now she’d need a mountain-sized crystal just to generate enough energy to flick a pea. “I wish I did, but I haven’t got a drop left.”
He shrugged. “Guess we sit and wait it out, then.”
Nerves upsetting her empty stomach, Tessa felt sick. “I wish you’d at least look a little bit worried.”
“You just have to accept what you can’t change.”
She tried for a smile but found none. “How about you changing what you can’t accept?”
He drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. “Feel free.”
Tessa sighed. “I wish I was.”
She trekked over to sit beside him, plopping down. Unlike the luxurious chambers aboveground, the dungeons below the queen’s sanctuary were cold, stark, and forbidding. They were given no furniture to sit on and no food to eat. Their sole luxury was a thin stream of water issuing from a slit in the wall. The water filled a circular stone basin; a drain carved around its edge prevented overflow. The water was clean, clear, and ice-cold.
At least we won’t thirst to death
, she thought. Of course, the flip side, starvation, wouldn’t be pleasant with or without water. She hoped that wasn’t going to be their fate. The idea of slowly wasting away into skin and bones wasn’t on her list of ways to die. At the very least, she hoped they’d go fast.